Sodium is an important heat transfer agent because it boils at a high temperature on the order of 1500.degree. F. In a nuclear reactor, such as the liquid metal fast breeder reactor at Clinch River, the sodium can be used to transfer heat from the reactor core to water to create super heated steam for driving turbines. In such a reactor, the pipes carrying sodium are enclosed in a vessel in which there is also emergency equipment such as switches, motors, and valves, which must operate in the event of a sodium fire. However, if hot sodium leaks from a pipe and ignites, the products of the combustion create chemicals that are very deleterious to equipment.
In order to assure that emergency equipment will operate for long periods of time such as many weeks in the event of a sodium fire, such equipment may be subjected to a test. In a typical prior art test, equipment such as electrical relays were placed in an air-tight chamber, and cables were run through the walls of the chamber to the equipment to test operation of the equipment. Then bricks of sodium were combusted with air in a special furnace, and the gaseous products of combustion were piped into the chamber. As the piped-in products of combustion cooled, they precipitated onto the equipment as powder representing the products of combustion. The conducting of such a test can be hazardous, and results in a very high cost. A test for determining the capacity of equipment to function in the presence of the products of combustion of a sodium fire, which reduced the cost of testing, would be of considerable benefit.